Captain's GLoG - Session 1
My micro-campaign group is back at it, this time with a scifi GLoGhack and Joel Hines Desert Moon of Karth. In this series, I'll post session reports and some non-spoiler-y GM notes.
In the beginning...
As the name of the module suggests, Karth is a small desert moon - small enough to trek around its entire circumference in a matter of days. It wouldn't be notable in the least if it weren't for two facts:
- It's the star sector's sole supply of wigoy, a snortable powder that stops aging and gives a significant high.
- It's fully enclosed by an archeotech orbital defense grid that restricts access to a single, heavily-taxed space elevator.
Our players are the crew of The Condor, a small smuggling ship:
- Captain Belee Vanda, an ex-politician turned to smuggling
- Jaspar Fury, a psion and former peasant on a medieval world
- Hora Tilly, an explorer and vagabond with a knack for locks
The crew was sold coordinates to a backdoor in Karth's orbital defense system. Someone named Reverend Oboku had promised them a narrow corridor through which they could slip through undetected. Unfortunately, those coordinates proved to be unreliable and The Condor was shot down, crashing into the orange sand below.
Surveying the damage
Crawling from the wreckage, the crew quickly observed that The Condor was surprisingly intact given their crash landing. Belee ran some quick diagnostics:
- The ship's reactor was stable, but disconnected giving them access only to emergency power and killing critical controls and diagnostic tools.
- The crew compartment was perforated with laser blasts and would require sealing.
- The ship's port engine had been fully obliterated. They'd need a replacement if they wanted to clear atmosphere again.
They had crash-landed near the wreckage of several other vessels. Hora suggested they might be others sold the same coordinates. They decided to pack their way over to see if they could scavenge enough parts to at least limp to Larstown, the central settlement on Karth at the base of the space elevator.
Wrecking crew
The crew set out for the nearest wrecks, due northwest from the ship. Hora grabbed some bed linens (conveniently earth-toned) to use as cloaks.
A few hours into their trek across a pavement-hard sand flat, the crew saw brown clouds on the horizon moving their way. They debated hunkering down under their cloaks and hiding, but decided they were close enough to the nearest ship to make a run for it.
They made it to the wreck, a cube-shaped security gunboat, in good time. A sandstorm rolled in just after. As the party found a hatch and crawled into the darkness the air filled with stinging orange dust and visibility dropped to a few meters.
Hora turned on her flashlight to illuminate a small airlock with two hardsuits hanging nearby. The crew noted those to salvage on their way out. Belee opened the opposite hatch into a cross-shaped corridor. The layout suggested this ship was modular, each section being snapped onto the central hub.
The crew crept forward and turned left, entering a cargo hold empty except for two corrugated containers with another hatch opposite them. The crew inspected the two cargo containers. Each had a small terminal connected to an analog lock sealing the end.
The left's terminal said it contained consumer goods - coffee filters, plastic cups, and aluminum foil. Hora popped the lock, revealing that it actually was filled with four ship-to-ship rockets - heavy duty explosives that could level a city block.
Excited, the crew tried the right container which was fitted with a refrigeration unit. It's terminal said it contained frozen shrimp. Hora cracked it open as well, revealing that once had been true, but the refrigeration had given out long ago. The party sealed the container up again, coughing from the sickening smell.
Not alone
Around this time, they heard a metallic clang from the hatch on the far side of the cargo hold. Hora killed the flashlight and Belee snuck ahead to check it out. Through the hatch she could see a murky orange light and a narrow sliver of chairs wrapped in crash webbing. Something skittered past her field of view.
She snuck back in a hurry and the party decided to seal the forward compartment rather than dealing with whatever was up there.
GM Notes
Off to an exciting start! We're running Captain's GLoG - a custom GLoGhack of mine that I promise to punch up and post soon. It's designed for scifi games in the Star Wars / Dune / Cowboy Bebop milieu.
Amusingly, this is my first time running GLoG close to the standard expectations of play. We have our own cobbled together rules, a small pool of custom classes, and a stable entourage of players. Every time I have run it previously, it was on an open table server with a "bring your own class" policy or as a one shot with no expectation of follow up play.
We're using the equipment list from Mothership and that seems to have been a real hit. I gave folks d6 x 100 credits to spend and they got to outfit themselves with tools and survival gear. A flashlight and lockpicks have already come up.
Karth is originally a Mothership module, but a strange one. It has tropes of scifi horror, but really seems more interested in travel and faction play. That's where the rules and details are clustered at least.
This is the first time in a while that I have run something with no encounter rolls while exploring a dungeon-like environment. We use them when the crew travels (as in the case of the sandstorm), but otherwise, its all up to the author's pacing and GM fiat. This probably feels more pronounced because the party immediately set about exploring an interior.
Karth assumes players will arrive by the space elevator, but I wanted an inciting incident that will a) keep the players here for our 6-ish sessions and b) give them immediate short- and medium-term goals to contend with. We hard framed the crash, beginning play as the characters crawled from the wreckage.